Denis, famous for having walked several miles after his head was cut off, carrying that deposed member under his arm.

A well-known French proverb was suggested some time in the last century by the relation of this mediæval miracle. The celebrated Madame Dudeffant, a wit and beauty of Horace Walpole's time, was told one day that the Archbishop of Paris had said that every one knew that Saint Denis had walked some distance after his decapitation, but that few people were aware that he had walked several miles on that occasion. Madame Dudeffant said, in reply: "Indeed, in such a case, it is the first step only that costs,"—"Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte."

Paris of the sleepy Merovingians,—do-nothing kings, a race made to be kicked out, and fulfilling its destiny,—Paris of Hugh Capet, in whose reign were laid the foundations of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Paris of 1176, whereof the old chronicler, John of Salisbury, writes: "When I saw the abundance of provisions, the gaiety of the people, the good condition of the clergy, the majesty and glory of all the church, the diverse occupations of men admitted to the study of philosophy, I seemed to see that Jacob's ladder whose summit reached heaven, and on which the angels ascended and descended. I must confess that truly the Lord was in this place. This passage also of a poet came to my mind: 'Happy is the man whose exile is to this place.'"

This suggests the familiar saying of our own time,—that good Bostonians, when they die, go to Paris.

Paris of Louis XI., he of the strong hand, the stony heart, the superstitious mind. Scott has seized the features of the time and of the man in his novel of "Quentin Durward." His hat, full of leaden images of saints, his cunning and pitiless diplomacy, and the personages of his brilliant court are brought vividly before us by the magician of the North.

Paris of Louis XIII., and its Richelieu live for us in Bulwer's vivid play, in which I have often seen the fine impersonation of Edwin Booth.

Paris of Louis XIV., the handsome young king, the idol, the absolute sovereign, who said: "L'état, c'est moi;" the old man before whom Madame de Maintenon is advised to say her prayers, in order to make upon his mind a serious impression; the revoker of the edict of Nantes; he who tried to extinguish Dutch freedom with French blood; a god in his own time, a figure now faded, pompous, self-adoring.

Paris of Louis XV., the reign of license, the Parc aux cerfs, the period of the courtesan, Madame de Pompadour, and a host of rivals and successors,—a hateful type of womanhood, justly odious and gladly forgotten.

Paris of Louis XVI., the days of progress and of good intentions; the deficit, the ministry of Neckar, the states general, Mirabeau, Lafayette, Robespierre, the fall of the monarch, the reign of terror; the guillotine in permanence, science, virtue, every distinction supplying its victims.

Paris of Napoleon I.; a whiff of grape-shot that silences the last grumblings of the Revolution; the mighty marches, the strategy of Ulysses, the labors of Hercules, the glory of Jupiter, ending in the fate of Prometheus.

Paris of the returned Bourbons, Charles X., the Duc de Berri, the Duchess d'Angoulême; Paris of the Orleans dynasty, civil, civic, free, witty; wise here, and wicked there; the Mecca of students in all sciences; a region problematic to parents, who fear its vices and expense, but who desire its opportunities and elegance for their sons. This was in the days in which a visit to Paris was the ne plus ultra of what parents could do to forward a son's studies, or perfect a daughter's accomplishments.

Having made my connections in this breathless review, I must return to speak of two modern works of art which treat of matters upon which my haste did not allow me, in the first instance, to dwell.

The first of these is Victor Hugo's picture of mediæval Paris, given in his famous romance entitled "Notre Dame de Paris." This remarkable novel preserves valuable details of the architecture of the ancient cathedral from which it takes its name. It paints the society of the time in gloomy colors. The clergy are corrupt, the soldiery licentious, the people forlorn and friendless. Here is a brief outline of the story. The beautiful gipsy, Esmeralda, dances and twirls her tambourine in the public streets. Her companion is a little goat, which she has taught to spell her lover's name, by putting together the letters which compose it. This lover is Phœbus, captain of the guard. Claude Frollo, the cunning, wicked priest of the period, has cast his evil eye upon the girl. He manages to surprise her when alone with her lover, and stabs the latter so as to endanger his life. A hideous dwarf, named Quasimodo, also loves Esmeralda, with humble, faithful affection. As the story develops, he turns out to have been the changeling laid in the place of the lovely girl-infant whom gipsies stole from her cradle. Esmeralda finds her distracted parent, but only to be torn from her arms again. The priest, Claude Frollo, foiled in his unlawful passion, stirs up the wrath of the populace against Esmeralda, accusing her of sorcery. She is seized by the mob, and hanged in the public street. The narrative is powerful and graphic, but it shows the disease of Victor Hugo's mind,—a morbid imagination which heightens the color of human crimes in order to give a melodramatic brilliancy to the virtue which contrasts with them. According to his view, suffering through the fault of others is necessarily the lot of all good people. French romance has in it much of this despair of the cause of virtue. It springs, however remotely, from the dark days of absolutism, whose bitter secrets were masked over by the frolic fancy of the people who invented the joyous science of minstrelsy.

The other work which I have now in mind is Meyerbeer's opera of "The Huguenots," which I mention here because it brings so vividly to mind the features of another period in the history of Paris. It represents, as an opera may, the frightful days in which a king's hospitality was made a trap for the wholesale butchery of as many Protestants as could be lured within the walls of Paris,—the massacre which bears the name of Saint Bartholomew. Nobles and leaders were shot down in the streets, or murdered in their beds, while the hollow phrases of the royal favor still rang in their ears. I have seen, near the church of St. Germain l'Auxerois, the palace window from which the kerchief of Catherine de Medici gave the signal for the fatal onslaught. "Do you not believe my word?" asked the Queen Mother one day of the English ambassador. "No, by Saint Bartholomew, Madam," was the sturdy reply.

Meyerbeer's opera is truly a Protestant work of art, vigorous and noble. Through all the intensity of its dramatic situations runs the grand choral of Luther:—

A mighty fortress is our God.

So true faith holds its own, and sails its silver boat upon the bloody sea of martyrdom.

Am I obliged to have recourse to a novel and an opera in order to bring before your eyes a vision of Paris in those distant ages? Such are our indebtednesses to art and literature. And here I must again mention, as a great master in both of these, Thomas Carlyle, who has given us so vivid and graphic a picture of the Revolution in France, which followed so nearly upon our own War of Independence.

I, a grandmother of to-day, recall the impression which this great conflict had made upon the grandparents of my childhood. Most wicked and cruel did they esteem it, in all of its aspects. To people of our day, it appears the inevitable crisis of a most malignant state of national disease. Much of political